This invention relates to a compact tool for trimming and shaping leather cue stick ends. It can be employed for reconditioning cue sticks which employ a leather tip as the impact end.
Leather tips have become traditional over many years of play because this tip, when adequately chalked, can be used to impact virtually any exposed surface of the cue ball without slippage. When the ball is struck, it will move foreward while carrying various degrees of top, bottom or side spin so that it carries out certain desired motions after it bounces from a side or end rail. Unfortunately leather flattens out after a relatively brief period of play and must be replaced fairly often.
The prior art teaches many devices and machines for renewing leather tips. Many are large requiring the cue stick to be moved to the machine. Thus the apparatus of Boyle(U.S. Pat. No. 89,624) is an early example of these machines. A device of Porper(U.S. Pat. No. 5,228,160 ) is more compact but still too bulky to be carried in a pocket. A pocket tool by Willard(U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,782) employs a sanding surface to shape the leather and provides a gauge to measure when the correct shape is achieved. Sanding is a slow process however; the processing time for a number of cue sticks is therefore too great.